ran accross this today, says we need to do a lot more work
Bob
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Wednesday October 17, 8:13 am Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: Nielsen Norman Group
New Report Quantifies Web Usability for People with Disabilities
Nielsen Norman Group to Release Findings From Usability Study With People
With Low Vision, No Vision or Motor Impairments
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 17, 2001--There is a movement to
make the Web open to everyone, including people with disabilities. But
making a website technically accessible does not necessarily make it
easy to use. In the first major study to observe Web usage by people
with disabilities, usability expert Jakob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman
Group (NNG) found that web usability was three to six times better for
non-disabled people than for people with low vision, no vision or
motor impairment. In a report entitled ``Beyond ALT Text: Making the
Web Easy to Use for Users with Disabilities,'' co-authors Nielsen and
NNG director of research Kara Pernice Coyne present their findings and
75 design guidelines to improve web usability for people with
disabilities. The 178-page report will be released Oct. 21 at the User
Experience 2001 conference in Washington D.C. and available to
download for $125 at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility.
Coyne, who led the study, will present a seminar on the topic at User
Experience 2001.
``People with disabilities embrace the Internet for the opportunities
it provides them to do things they couldn't do before, like read the
daily newspaper,'' said Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman
Group, ``Still, the Web is far from fulfilling its potential to serve
users with disabilities. Inaccessible and unusable sites abound, even
sites that are theoretically accessible have low usability for people
with disabilities.''
To measure the magnitude of usability problems for people with
disabilities, Nielsen Norman Group conducted a study in the United
States and Japan. The 104 users who participated in the study included
users with low vision, no vision, or motor impairment and a control
group of people without disabilities. Assistive technologies such as
screen readers, Braille devices and screen magnifiers were used.
In part of the study, American users with and without disabilities
were asked to perform the same four tasks:
1) Information retrieval: Find the average temperature in Dallas,
TX in January;
2) Buy an item: Janet Jackson's CD "All for You" from Target's
website;
3.) Information retrieval: Find a bus departing O'Hare airport to
a specific address in Chicago using the Transit Chicago
website;
4) Compare and contrast: Find the best mutual fund satisfying
certain criteria on Schwab's website.
Following are the results:
* Task completion rate: Screen reader users were able to complete
the tasks given to them 12.5% of the time; screen magnifier users
21.4% of the time; control group 78% of the time.
* Time on a task (min:sec): Screen reader users spent 16:34 on task;
screen magnifier users spent 15:26 on task; control group 7:14 on
task.
* Errors (average across all tasks): Screen reader users 2.0; screen
magnifier users 4.5; control group .06.
* Subjective rating (1-7 scale with 7 indicating the most positive):
Screen reader users 2.5; screen magnifier users 2.9 on task;
control group 4.6.
Nielsen Norman Group (http://www.nngroup.com) is a user-experience
think tank that advises companies about how succeed through
human-centered design of products and services. Nielsen Norman Group
principals Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce ``Tog'' Tognazzini are
each world-renowned experts in usability and human use of technology.
Besides authoring books and evangelizing about user experience, they
and the other user-experience specialists in Nielsen Norman Group
offer high-level strategic consultation on usability of websites,
consumer products, software designs and anything else that needs to be
easy-to-use. Press contact: Darcy Provo, Antenna Group
darcy@antennapr.com; 415/977-1920.
______________
Contact:
Antenna Group (for Nielsen Norman Group)
Darcy Provo, 415/977-1920
_______________________